"Hey, listen, Irma. We're still getting the organizational details straightened out. But you're in line for ops officer of this bastard outfit. Tradition says that the former ops officer of what used to be the squadron here becomes XO . . . and besides, he's got the seniority on you. You haven't been a full lieutenant long. If I had my way-"
"Aw, don't worry about it, Skipper. You know me. I'm not hung up on titles. All I want is-"
"-is to kill Bugs," Togliatti finished for her, nodding. "That's what I've been meaning to talk to you about. You know I'm due for command of some carrier's strikegroup after this campaign." He didn't add, If I survive. Fighter pilots never did. "So everybody's going to be moving up one bump-including you, whether you like it or not. And you need to understand something. There's more to it than just killing Bugs."
"Yeah? Somehow, I thought that was what we were out here to do. Silly me."
Togliatti ignored the undertone of petulance, and his voice was as serious as Irma had ever heard from him when he continued.
"Yes it is-to do it in an organized fashion, so that the killing is as efficient and effective as possible. And that's what people in command positions-which you're going to be, sooner or later-are for. It's a fallacy to think that the best warrior is always the best officer. A good officer isn't so much a warrior as a manager of warriors. Random violence is just self-indulgence. It's worse than useless, because it disperses energy that ought to be focused on achieving our war aims. I'm telling you all this because when you rise in the chain of command and assume greater responsibilities-and it's your duty to do just that, whether you want to or not-you're going to have to give something up. Can you?"
Irma was silent for a space. She'd never heard Togliatti talk like this, and she sensed that this wasn't a moment for flippancy. And she knew just what he meant, for in unguarded moments of post-battle camaraderie and off-duty drinking, she'd revealed her past to him. So she emulated his seriousness.
"I . . . don't know, Skipper. I'll have to think about it."
"That'll be fine."
It was perplexing. The concentration of tonnage and firepower that the cloaked pickets reported was entirely out of proportion as a response to the destruction of a mere survey flotilla.
To be sure, the Enemy had been a more active explorer than the Fleet even before the Fleet's losses had curtailed its own survey efforts. The path of survival had always mandated the careful and complete development of each System Which Must Be Protected before the expanding perimeter of the Fleet's explorations risked contact with star systems which might contain fresh Enemies to threaten those Systems Which Must Be Protected. Closed warp points, especially, were logical places to halt exploration while the Systems Which Must Be Protected consolidated behind them, since such warp points formed natural fire breaks against potential Enemies.
That doctrine of slow and cautious expansion had, of necessity, been modified somewhat on all three occasions upon which the Fleet had encountered an Enemy whose own sphere had encompassed multiple star systems. Even then, however, the Fleet had not diverted such effort into dashing off in every conceivable direction, and now that the Fleet had been forced-temporarily, at least-onto the defensive, its exploration efforts had virtually ceased. After all, the last thing the Fleet needed was to stumble into yet another Enemy while it was already engaged against two of them. Far better to allow the Enemy to blunder into systems the Fleet had already picketed with cloaked cruisers and then backtrack him to a point of contact in his space.
Yet even allowing for the fact that this group of Enemies were frenetic explorers, the commitment of a force this powerful just to continue exploration of a single warp line was . . . odd.
Or perhaps it wasn't.
The Enemy survey force which had been destroyed in this system had been detected by the system's cloaked pickets when it first passed through on what clearly had been its outbound course. When the Fleet attacked it, it had been returning to its home base, which might have been for any number of reasons, ranging from the need to resupply to the discovery that the warp line it had been exploring ended-as so many did-in a useless cul-de-sac. But the dispatch of a follow-up force this powerful down a barren, dead-end warp chain would have been pointless. And the diversion of so much combat power from the known points of contact to follow up a relatively unimportant warp line whose exploration had simply been interrupted by a routine need to return to base would have made no sense.
Therefore, the Enemy must not think the chain was unimportant.
What had the survey flotilla found?
It couldn't be the closed warp point through which the Fleet had entered and left the system. There was no way the Enemy could know of its existence, and even if the Enemy had deduced that it must exist, it would have been impossible for him to locate. And, in any event, the Enemy wasn't proceeding toward the closed warp point, but rather was advancing single-mindedly toward the open one that would take him to the chain's next, even more useless warp junction.
But whatever these Enemies' mysterious objective might be, they would eventually be returning this way, as the survey flotilla had. They could not be allowed to do so unchallenged-especially not when a force this powerful had obligingly thrust itself into a position where it might be cut off by even more powerful forces and utterly destroyed. But the immediately available forces were insufficient to entrap it on its return. Therefore, help must be summoned from elsewhere.
Fortunately, there was a place from which that help could come.
CHAPTER ELEVEN: Chaff in the Furnace
In the words of the legendary and doubtless apocryphal Yogi Berra, it was déjà vu all over again.
They'd entered Home Hive One just as unobtrusively as they'd once slipped into Home Hive Three, emerging from the closed warp point into Stygian regions where a six light-hour-distant Sol-like sun barely stood out from the starfields. Then they'd formed up and proceeded sunward in a long-prepared order, toward the three Bug-inhabited planets which a chance bit of orbital choreography had placed in a neat row, at a three-way aphelion.
As he gazed into the system-scale holo display, Raymond Prescott found himself wondering if the Bugs believed in astrology. Somehow, he doubted it. But if they did, they were about to get a whole new perspective on planetary alignments as a harbinger of ill luck.
He and Shaaldaar and their staffs had discussed the upcoming operation and its execution in exquisite detail, poring over the survey data Andrew had died to get home. They had a very good notion of the daunting scope of the task which faced them, and the discussion of precisely how to go about it had waxed voluble. Indeed, given the Orion and Gorm traditions of free-wheeling debate-which were considerably more fractious than the TFN normally embraced-the debate had moved beyond free-wheeling to vociferous on more than one occasion.
The overwhelming temptation was to try to repeat what Sixth Fleet had managed to accomplish in Home Hive Three. Hopefully, the "Shiva Option," as the Alliance's strategists had decided to label it, would have the same disorienting effect here that it had had there.
Unfortunately, there'd been two major problems in relying on that strategy. First, the Bugs must have suffered a severe jolt to their confidence in the inviolability of their home hive systems after what had happened to Home Hive Three. At a bare minimum, they'd almost certainly upgraded their sensor nets in the other home hive systems, and it was unlikely that Seventh Fleet would succeed in creeping in quite as close as Sixth Fleet had managed. Given the orbital defenses and the massive mobile force Andrew had detected in Home Hive One, it was very unlikely that Seventh Fleet could land a repeat of that devastating strike without first fighting its way through everything the Bugs could throw at it.